Page 17 - Florida Sentinel 10-5-18

Noah’s Steadfast Faith GENESIS 6:9b-22 (KJV)
KJV Genesis 6:9 These are the genera- tions of Noah: Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God.
10 And Noah begat three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth.
11 The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence.
12 And God looked upon the earth, and, be- hold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth.
13 And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with vi- olence through them; and, behold, I will de- stroy them with the earth.
14 Make thee an ark of gopher wood; rooms shalt thou make in the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch.
15 And this is the fash- ion which thou shalt make it of: The length of the ark shall be three hundred cubits, the breadth of it fifty cubits, and the height of it thirty cubits.
16 A window shalt thou make to the ark, and in a cubit shalt thou finish it above; and the door of the ark shalt thou set in the side thereof; with lower, sec- ond, and third stories shalt thou make it.
17 And, behold, I, even I, do bring a flood of wa- ters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of
life, from under heaven; and every thing that is in the earth shall die.
18 But with thee will I establish my covenant; and thou shalt come into the ark, thou, and thy sons, and thy wife, and thy sons’ wives with thee.
19 And of every living thing of all flesh, two of every sort shalt thou bring into the ark, to keep them alive with thee; they shall be male and female.
20 Of fowls after their kind, and of cattle after their kind, of every creeping thing of the earth after his kind, two of every sort shall come unto thee, to keep them alive.
21 And take thou unto thee of all food that is eaten, and thou shalt gather it to thee; and it shall be for food for thee, and for them.
22 Thus did Noah; ac- cording to all that God commanded him, so did he.
With sorrow, God takes a look at the earth in this state. The first time God saw the earth, everything was perfect (Genesis 1:31), but then sin entered the world. This cur- rent assessment of the earth’s condition is the saddest one. Corruption has overtaken its inhabitants to such an extent that nothing could be done to stop its destruction. But in the midst of this darkness, God saw a tiny light in Noah and his family who would re- populate the world after the destruction.
The son of Lamech, Noah
was born into a world that had become completely cor- rupted. However, because Noah found favor with God, he was declared righteous. Through Noah and his fam- ily, God preserved humanity and gave to the world a new beginning. Noah can be viewed, therefore, as the sec- ond father of humankind. Many generations separated Noah and the earth’s first couple.
Righteousness Creates Faithfulness (Genesis 6:9)
Every relationship is fu- eled by one of two motives: “I have to know this person,” or “I get to know this person.” The same thing applies to how we view God, for some people believe we “have to” treat Him with respect or else He will makes us feel guilty (if not curse us).
This actually tracks back to how we struggle to predict the consequences of our own behavior, so we just end up pinning all of the worst things in our lives on Him. Noah saw things the other way: By living a righteous life he felt the pleasure of faith- fulness (6:9). It’s what hap- pens when we do what God has asked and help re-create
this world back into what He originally intended.
We experience the joy He hardwired into how things were meant to be experi- enced. We move from “have to” to “get to” when we will faithfully protect and pre- serve the things we care about.
Faithfulness Creates Trust (vv. 10–22)
When we truly know someone, we do things more out of trust than out of the person explaining all the de- tails. Noah was a father to three boys (v. 10) Shem, Ham and Japeth, so he knew something about trying to keep them safe in a world of violence (v. 11). They had to trust his perspective as their father despite not knowing all he knew, just as Noah had to trust God’s perspective and instructions.
In time, these three sons would be used by God to re- propagate the human race. Shem would play a crucial
role as the son through whom the lineage of Jesus would come.
Like a father and son rela- tionship, God and Noah had built a special kind of inti- macy and trust over time as Noah lived righteously. It al- lowed them to form a covenant in the midst of it all (v. 18) — even if Noah didn’t understand the purpose of every detail, he did it all (v. 22).
We tend to struggle with this most after experiencing great uncertainty and loss. If it feels like God has let us down in protecting our loved ones, we might let the crisis overtake our trust.
It would take Noah decades to complete the task God had given him. God gave explicit plans for the ark.
Faithfulness is key for us to recreate our confidence in the Lord out of truth instead of emotion. At some point in your faith journey, you see the harder things as a path- way to embrace the greater things.
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